Plants from the Edge of the World
There is a group of modern-day plant hunters, including Brits Chris Chadwell & Roy Lancaster, Scotsman Jim Archibald, the American Dan Hinkley, and the director of the local Quarryhill Botanical Garden, Bill McNamara. Also included in those ranks are Tony Kirkham, the Head Arborist at Kew Botanic Garden and Mark Flanagan, Keeper of the Gardens in Windsor Great Park (how’s that for a title?) who together penned Plants from the Edge of the World--New Explorations in the Far East--about their experiences collecting plants in the wild in Asia in 1989—1997.
In 1987, a hundred-year storm blew down over eight hundred mature trees in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. After cleaning up the detritus, the magnitude of the loss provided the impetus for a new wave of plant collecting in the wild by Kew, with the first of such expeditions being led by Kirkham and Flanagan. Over a dozen years they traveled to Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Russia and Turkey in search of exotic plants.
Their story is a compelling first-person narrative (alternating between the two) of daily life, strange food and hardships on the road, leavened with humor, and spiced by vivid descriptions of breathtaking scenery of soaring rocky peaks, panoramic gorges, and unspoiled mountainsides.
One anecdote from the first trip to Korea goes: “Our aim is Sorak-san (snow-capped mountain) National Park, situated in the northeast of South Korea, just south of the DMZ . . . .we embark on an uncomfortable five-hour bus journey northeast across the country . . . .I am sitting next to a young boy aged about nine who is chewing on a piece of dried squid, and the fishy aroma gets stronger as the journey goes on. He kindly offers me a piece, but I decline the offer, sticking conventional chewing gum. I offer him a piece, which he tries; he turns up his nose, and decides he prefers squid.”
And a bit later in that first trip: “We climb steadily through a dwarf alpine forest of Betula ermanii and taxus cuspidata, more Magnoila sieboldii, Berberis davurica and Rhododendron dauricam. . . . . . We eventually reach the summit at 4557 ft: the panoramic view is breathtaking, with huge drifts of the magnolia and rhododendron running riot in the afternoon sun . . .”
About the last trip in the book to Japan in 1997: “EHOK (Expedition to Hokkaido), the acronym for this collecting trip will follow every plant, both on the label and the plant records, wherever it is planted . . . . This expedition, a culmination of two years preparatory work by Mark, will complete the temperate loop we began together in 1989. . . . I will lead our team of four on this trip: Lord Howick (whom I will henceforth refer to as Charles) from the Howick Arboretum in Northumberland, William (Bill) McNamara, director of Quarry Hill Botanical Gardens in California, and Giles Coode-Adams, recently retired chief-executive of the Kew Foundation. . . . . We soon get into a pattern, with Bill and I collecting and bagging seed, Giles taking the herbarium specimens, and Charles writing the field notes. . . . . Wherever we look, there is something new to collect, and the day goes very quickly. . . . .Our next thrill: we come across a large specimen of Magnolia kobus, loaded with red fruits right down to the ground. As we fill a muslin bag with the ripe fruits, our guide Takahashi informs of that this is the possibly the northern-most site of any magnolia species!”
That’s the flavor of the book. Those horticultural enthusiasts who like to both travel to exotic places, and who have a love of unusual plants will find this a fascinating read.
reviewed by Sonoma County Master Gardener Steven Hightower